From a review of the book "GIRLS AND SEX/Navigating the Complicated New Landscape," by Peggy Orenstein.
The interviews... reveal an almost comical generation gap. When one recent high school graduate explains to Orenstein that performing oral sex is “like money or some kind of currency. . . . It’s how you make friends with the popular guys. . . . It’s more impersonal than sex,” Orenstein writes, “I may be of a different generation, but, frankly, it’s hard for me to consider a penis in my mouth as ‘impersonal.’ ”
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71 comments:
I was at first amazed at the roll blowjobs play in modern boy-girl relationships. I just hope my grand daughters are not in that role ever.
Weird sex practices are not just American. I understand that anal intercourse is common in Iran among young people so the girl can remain a "virgin" at marriage time.
Of course that might lead to a surfeit of lawyers in Iran, which would probably bring the collapse of the place just it has as here.
Sex panic repackaged as feminist. Yawn.
Sarcasm font--women are much better off today now that they have been liberated. Wasn't women's lib supposed to be about women being more than sex objects?
The stories she cites obviously aren't representative of the experiences of a large number of women. A lot of such books I find tend to concentrate on a certain middle or upper middle class, mostly white, college going demographic.
All of a sudden I feel like going home and kicking my mom for having me 30 years too soon.
Michael K said...
Of course that might lead to a surfeit of lawyers in Iran, which would probably bring the collapse of the place just it has as here.
Wow, I didn't know how they were made. Learn something every day, thanks Doc!
NEW landscape??
“I may be of a different generation, but, frankly, it’s hard for me to consider a penis in my mouth as ‘impersonal.’ ”
This same exact older generation confusion was being pearl-clutched back when Bill Ken-Starr'd Monica.
(Sorry, male college students, but studies show that the percentage of your female peers who fake orgasm has been steadily rising.)
One of feminism's theme's is that every woman's insecurities need to be validated for their psychological benefit. Yet casually open hostility to men's insecurities is rampant. Their casual double standards show they aren't interested in equity. They're just interest group advocates and as such they should be ignored.
Women deserve much better than modern feminists, we all do.
Anthony said...
All of a sudden I feel like going home and kicking my mom for having me 30 years too soon.
On the other hand, expect 18 months later to be charged with sexual assault by your now Ex-GF
Paging Dr. Laslo. Dr. Laslo, report to Althouse immediately.
Remaining a virgin is work these days. But no matter what technique she uses, it still boils down to not spreading her legs. All else is negotiable.
Actually there is a wisdom to this. Spreading the legs is a submission that leads to love and marriage. The others are sex worker acts. Foreplay yes, but soul bonding no.
It’s more impersonal than sex,” Orenstein writes, “I may be of a different generation, but, frankly, it’s hard for me to consider a penis in my mouth as ‘impersonal.’
Obviously, she choses selectively to ignore the "benefits" of safe sex education and condom distribution in schools?
Peggy Orenstein
Cannot do more 'n whine
Girls today just impersonate sexiness
And fellatio's nothing but emptiness
"It’s how you make friends with the popular guys. . . . It’s more impersonal than sex,”
Thanks a lot, Bill Clinton!
Not exactly breaking news. The media discovered during the Clinton-Lewinsky imbroglio that large numbers of Americans, especially younger ones, did not believe that oral intercourse actually constituted "sex."
http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/01/26/time/kirn.html
It makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective.
Baaack Home weuns called it an "Arkansas Howdy".
And do you know what a "Rainbow Party" is?
"Learn something every day, thanks Doc!"
Yes, that was a point made by the OB to a woman who asked if anal sex could make you pregnant. He said, "Where do you think lawyers come from ?"
Kids these days indeed.
It makes me so sad, when young people express their experience of sex, how shitty the sex they are having evidently is. Remember that, I think, Guardian article that Althouse blogged, where the young woman was bitching about how insensitive her Tinder dates are because they don't bother to learn what a woman likes in bed? Yeah, no shit sherlock--sex with strangers always sucks. They don't pretend to care about your pleasure because they don't care about YOU. It's just a transaction. You're just using each other.
I wish they would take seriously what, say, Catholics really teach about sex and how fantastic it is when it's exclusive, committed, giving, truly intimate (including emotionally) and unselfish. When you deeply love and care about the other person, when you connect on a very deep and vulnerable level, when you are safe to express what you really want and why, when you want to make your partner feel amazing and they want to do the same for you.
These kids these days deserve better than the empty, crappy, porny, transactional sexual encounters they seem to be having.
@Rick: "Their casual double standards show they aren't interested in equity. They're just interest group advocates" Always have been. The foundational lie: that feminism was about equality.
In this particular case, as in others, the AA proviso applies: any human difference that can be presented in a way favoring women, will be.
The perennial teenage-sex panic comes into bloom again. As Nyanmujal points out, it's always focused on white, smart, middle class girls, who seem to be caught up in modern culture. These good girls hear the conflicting messages to have sex and to not have sex, and it tears them apart!
We ignore poor, lower class girls who get pregnant at 14 because they're oppressed by society and it's not their fault. We glamorize rich, upper class girls who turn 18 with scandalous sexual histories because it's good copy for the grocery store checkout line rags and mags. But Good God, we must understand that Jan Brady giving a blowy to a high school boy is a sign of the collapse of society! Feminist should celebrate, it is a sign of the Patriarchy being smashed. Good job! Or was "teenage girls treating sex as inconsequentially as teenage boys" not the goal of your drive for "equality"?
I am glad I did not have to cope with the crap that kids these days have to cope with when I was young and vulnerable.
It's only the girls with low self-esteem who are giving the most blow jobs. Second tier trying to make it up top.
I wasn't in high school that long ago. There was a stark divide in the early aughts. One group of kids was having a lot more sex than the rest of us. I don't think it's really cultural or generational. There will always be one group that can use sex like currency and the other group who will feel very uncomfortable with that thought.
Ann Althouse said...And fellatio's nothing but emptiness
Well, speaking as a man...nevermind.
I still can't keep up, though--isn't this somehow sex-negative (or, ah, anti-sex-positive)?
Aren't we supposed to believe that sexuality is substantially the same for males and females and that the female sex drive is just as strong (and in other respects similar if not equal) to the male sex drive? Also aren't we supposed to believe that "as long as it's between consenting parties and you protect against disease" any behavior (w/r/t sex) is ok?
I get that she's identifying a problem, but I don't get how what she's identifying CAN EXIST as a problem if one believes what the Left and/or our current culture says you're required to believe.
B said...
I wasn't in high school that long ago. There was a stark divide in the early aughts. One group of kids was having a lot more sex than the rest of us. I don't think it's really cultural or generational
This has always been the case, and in things far more varied than sex. We focus on the load examples and forget they are a minority. But in turn these loud few can drive culture.
For example campus political activists are a tiny minority, an overwhelming number of students think they are not just wrong but idiots. We focus on it because this small dedicated cadre will devote their lives to injustice and many will eventually work themselves into positions to enforce it or support those who do.
What's the reciprocation rate of cunnilingus to fellatio? We are a data driven society and we should know we have this data.
If this cuts down on the teen pregnancy rate, then I'm in favor of these forms of onanism.
Not exactly breaking news. The media discovered during the Clinton-Lewinsky imbroglio that large numbers of Americans, especially younger ones, did not believe that oral intercourse actually constituted "sex."
My wife doesn't. Which is why she never does it. I used to know girls who were strippers and escorts in college to "pay for school" and all of them said blowjobs were the most frequently wanted thing to do. I never partook (those girls were hideous, to be honest), but in college, I always heard girls will give head far easier than they will spread their legs.
So, CLEARLY, it is hardly viewed by most women as being no big deal.
What's the reciprocation rate of cunnilingus to fellatio? We are a data driven society and we should know we have this data.
From my experience, cunnilingus is more frequently done than fellatio. I know numerous women whose husbands will go down on them repeatedly each week and they may return the favor once or so a month.
One the topic of Iranian sexual practices, this quote from Spengler's essential essay on Islam is helpful:
one out of eight Iranian women was infected by chlamydia, a common venereal disease that frequently causes infertility
They got it somewhere.
Michael, from the soldiers who were stationed in the Middle East told me, sex was really easily available if you went to clubs at night.
"cunnilingus is more frequently done than fellatio."
Nobody, well, almost nobody anyway, is writing about the coming epidemic of throat cancer in young men from HPV coming from cunnilingus.
HPV infection should not be a cause for concern among monogamous couples with a rich and varied sex life as long as the sexual system remains closed and other immune compromising factors are not present.
I'll note that once again the Left's application of the idea of false consciousness is highly inconsistent. It's almost like they don't really believe in that concept but instead use it as a tool (to fight cultural battles, mostly) and discard it when it's not convenient.
When they're attacking "traditionalists" who teach that sexual activity has a moral component and it's better for young people to avoid sex the Left's line is that kids are just expressing themselves, doing what they want, doing what's natural, and it's wrong to stop them or moralize against that behavior.
When they've decided that some aspect of the sexual experience/mores is bad for one of their interest groups (feminism, let's say) suddenly the sexual activity/behavior isn't genuinely desired, it's not "actual female sexuality" and that's a problem. When fuddy-duddy parents told their daughters to keep their legs closed and not engage in behavior as a result of peer pressure or some such, that wasn't being sex-positive; when the Left tells young women that their sexual activity isn't an expression of their "actual female sexuality" then that's just good feminism.
Slut Walks are good because they're empowering. Young women dressing provocatively and engaging in sexual behavior like frequent "impersonal" BJs is a symptom of society oppressing women by making the "act out" sexuality.
Only the Left, you see, can tell when something is genuine (and good) and when something is false/acting out/a choice taken due to larger or societal pressures (and bad). The fact that those determinations just happen to coincide with the Left's ideology itself, you know, is a total coincidence. You losers not on the Left wouldn't understand--if you think you understand you're just deluded--probably because of how our society's oppressing you, poor thing.
Vote for Hillary!
Animal House:
Boon: [to Katy] I want you to fix Pinto up, but it's got to be a very special girl.
Larry: Look, you don't have to...
Boon: Now, she should be good-looking, but we're willing to trade looks for a certain... morally casual attitude.
Katy: You mean you want someone who'll screw on the first date.
Boon: Well put. You see, Pinto's never been laid.
"....And fellatio's nothing but emptiness..."
Speak for yourself. It's one of the most loving things my wife does for me. Frankly, for a woman, it's work. The giver has to be able to breathe, and it can be quite a workout. So I totally appreciate a nice hummer whether she offers it, or I ask for one. I do not take it for granted, and I know she's not using it as currency. Of course, we're married now for almost 17 years, so there is that.
Teenage girls? I'd be relieved if all my daughter was doing was giving head, because no one ever got pregnant from a blowjob. My son? I'd see to it that he understood that blowjobs are a wonderful way of relieving tension, and again, never got anyone pregnant.
Your wife does that?
Consider yourself fortunate.
"...From my experience, cunnilingus is more frequently done than fellatio...."
Not at our house, and I doubt that's the case in society. My wife is post-menopausal, and her libido doesn't match mine, so I get more head than she does. If she wanted more, she'd get it, but we don't view sex as a scorecard, or as some sort of reciprocal arrangement. I suspect most older monogamous couples are like us, due to menopause in women.
Now you've piqued my curiosity. I'll start a survey later today.
cunnilingus is more frequently done than fellatio...."
Cunnilingus is very gratifying. In fact, sometimes I forget to drive Dick home.
Michael K said...
Yes, that was a point made by the OB to a woman who asked if anal sex could make you pregnant. He said, "Where do you think lawyers come from ?"
Lest we forget you are a surgeon :)
Should read "psycho-socio Clintondectomy".
Michael K wrote: I understand that anal intercourse is common in Iran among young people so the girl can remain a "virgin" at marriage time.
--
Late 80's.knew a UW-Madison sorority girl that practiced same..
@roadgeek/
As they say, lt's tough work, but somebody has to do it.. :)
One more thing......DO NOT USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO LOOK UP AN OLD ONE-NIGHT-STAND....unless you enjoy the sensation of OMG-she's-hideous tinged with what-the-hell-was-I-thinking! Which is a round-about way of saying, the smart, pretty girls were not wearing knee pads.
The dysfunctional revolution continues to bear fruits...
"The dysfunctional revolution continues to bear fruits..."
Fruit!
The other is a separate topic.
Birches said...
It's only the girls with low self-esteem who are giving the most blow jobs. Second tier trying to make it up top.
Probably true. Or at least truthy.
Why Don't Smart Teens Have Sex? A Behavioral Genetic Approach
O tempora! O mores!
The problem is not new.
damikesc said... [hush][hide comment]
From my experience, cunnilingus is more frequently done than fellatio. I know numerous women whose husbands will go down on them repeatedly each week and they may return the favor once or so a month.
Yeah, Ima call bullshit on this one.
Yeah, Ima call bullshit on this one.
Feel free to call what you wish. I have friends and we don't tend to keep a lot of secrets. Didn't claim to speak to all women.
You can know women and not have sex with them. Shocking.
"...Yeah, Ima call bullshit on this one...."
Me too. None of the women friends in my cohort behave that way, and none of the guy friends in my cohort are so lacking in self-respect as to put up with that circumstance. Head about once a week at my house, and I think I'm about average. Of course, I've been nursing a sprained sacroiliac, so intercourse has gone by the boards for the time being, and that's affecting the average.
My cohort, by the way, is 53-55 years old and white.
"cunnilingus is more frequently done than fellatio"
There are sure to be data points all over the graph. In all of the relationships throughout my life, the C:F ratio has always been about 10:1 because I wanted it that way. I had no complaints about it either.
@Misplaced Pants,
When you deeply love and care about the other person, when you connect on a very deep and vulnerable level, when you are safe to express what you really want and why, when you want to make your partner feel amazing and they want to do the same for you.
In the midst of this mostly male neanderthal chatter, we have the above thoughtful comment. Well done!
Of course, Pants is correct. I remember numerous dates (Yes, back then we actually asked girls out on dates!), where we dressed up, checked the reservations at the restaurant, washed the car, sometimes met the parents or roommates at the door, practiced good manners, opened car doors, etc, etc.
Does that stuff still happen?
I can see why they might think of it as more impersonal than sex--there's no chance of having a baby together.
Michael K:
I think I know what you are inferring, but, no.
Fruits as in dysfunction as in confused, which may "crossover", but that was not my intent.
Hello! Remember when idiots downplayed and dismissed Bill Clinton getting blow jobs from an employee while at work as inconsequential, all to protect their political victories?
This is the result.
roadgeek got a blowjob from his wife. HE IS GOD! I now worship the great roadgeek (and wonder if his wife has a sister...)
Bay Area, in a funny coincidence I had a discussion with a younger coworker yesterday wherein he expressed surprise when I told him how I used to wash my car before dates (he was complaining about the cost of movie tix and I pointed out how cheaply he is able to date now w/group hang outs, Netflix, etc).
damikesc said... [hush][hide comment]
Yeah, Ima call bullshit on this one.
Feel free to call what you wish. I have friends and we don't tend to keep a lot of secrets. Didn't claim to speak to all women.
You can know women and not have sex with them. Shocking.
Guess I owe an apology. I know plenty of women, in the real world . We don't usually talk about how their husbands perform "several times a week". I suppose these "men" go to wives workplace and kneel under desk at least once a week, to take care of there wife. Am I right? BTW, I suppose your wife shares your info with the other husbands?
I wonder if some of these older gents and their cohorts have ever discussed the possibility that post menopausal women might enjoy and possibly prefer cunnilingus to intercourse? That their female libidos are not in fact diminished but their anatomy's have changed? "... none of the guy friends in my cohort are so lacking in self-respect as to put up with that circumstance" would lead me to believe those women would not likely ask to be pleasured in that way.
"...lead me to believe those women would not likely ask to be pleasured in that way...."
I did survey my closest female friend a short time ago. She reported, to my surprise, that there's far more C than F in her bedroom. Which startled me, because her husband is very self-centered, and doesn't give a lot of thought to her pleasure.
"and wonder if his wife has a sister.."
Yes, she has a sister, but I can't picture her with a penis in her mouth. Her husband spends a lot of time in the garage drinking Grain Belt. (All he can afford on the allowance she gives him.)
Sorry, male college students, but studies show that the percentage of your female peers who fake orgasm has been steadily rising.
As long as it's believable... who's sorry?
What's the reciprocation rate of cunnilingus to fellatio? We are a data driven society and we should know we have this data.
I don't know about long term relationships, but the problem with cunnilingus for women is that for many it seems that vaginal sex comes easy after they have had cunnilingus. She lets you go down on her, and fifteen minutes later, you are banging her. My memory is that this worked best with younger women with some sexual experience, but not really overly experienced.
Can anyone ever remember reading an article and being shocked at the increasing Puritanism of the younger generation? You'd think that sometime somewhere the pendulum would swing back. I'm not so sure that all this is actually happening. Older people take a prurient interest in reading about the depravity of younger people........Whatever happend to handjobs? I guess girls no longer want to endure the pain and shame of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Ms Orenstein’s difficulty understanding the youth these days is not so much a generational problem as ignorance of the differences between men and women. Young women engage in hook-up behavior primarily to seek status with female peers; personal sexual satisfaction is secondary. And who is Ms Orenstein to say these young women are not wildly successful at achieving their goal?
As I've told you materialistic prudes a thousand times: America will never have a healthy culture of sexuality until it loses its unhealthy and obsessive relationship with money.
I'm not saying it has to be empty, only that girls today are repoting that for them it is.
It's like money.
In my book, that's prostitution.
If your heart isn't in it, your body should not be there. Including your mouth.
reporting
Same thing. You can't buy love ("heart"), either.
So people simulate that, too.
I have to disagree a bit with Earnest Prole. Women date for status; that's a given -- but women absolutely screw for satisfaction. It's a primary, even singular, concern.
All the body stuff is just an approximation of the heart stuff. We all know it.
You may not have gotten the memo, Fabi, but women don’t date anymore — hence screwing for status
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